It didn’t warm up. In fact it got colder. There was more snow and freezing rain. Everyone is getting very excited at the idea of a white Christmas which would be quite nice in a Christmas cards outside the window kind of way but I wish it would hang on for bit until I’m off work.

The walk to the bus stop was more of a slide, with quite a bit of grabbing fences and a few heart stopping moments. Out on the main road the pavement slopes from the houses down to the road which is not good when your feet are going from under you and the cars are skidding along inches away. My life may have flashed in front of my eyes a few times.

In fairness the council had actually gritted the road for a change but the snow and freezing rain came down after that and formed a layer of ice over the grit. At the bus stop I stood shivering while the cars slid down the road at strange angles on the road in front of me. This was more than a little unnerving because behind the bus stop there is a high brick wall and no chance of escape. There was quite a crowd waiting at the bus stop with me because there hadn’t been any busses for at least half an hour even though the service is every ten minutes. Turns out they were having problems coming down the Big Hill and several had been diverted.

It could have been worse. There were more than two hundred cars abandoned on the motorway in the snow near Basingstoke. A bus did eventually arrive and I wasn’t very late to work. Quite a few people didn’t make it in at all so for once, no one was moaning about time keeping, they were just glad to see anyone turn up no matter how late.

Our New Manager, Ali Rana, was stuck in the snow and wasn’t coming in.
“Bloody good job too,” Panda said. She then proceeded to tell me how he given everyone a good talking to in Cuddle yesterday while I was off. It was all, ‘you might think you’re the best because your the top selling team but you’ve got a new manager now, you have to prove yourselves to me. Talk time is too high, wrap is too high, commitment is low and some members of this team are coasting along on other people’s sales.’ That’ll be me then.
“Full of his own piss and self importance,” Panda said with a disgusted sneer.
I’m not looking forward to meeting him.

With so many people off and no manager there was quite a festive feel to the office. The phones were eerily quiet. Maybe everyone was too busy Christmas shopping in actual shops to bother us. After all who wants to buy a new cooker or fridge a couple of days before Christmas? The only calls we had were for the service centre, people wanting an engineer because an appliance had stopped working.

Each team was given one of those huge tins of sweets and, in the absence of any real work to do, we spent the day chatting and scoffing them. This is not good. Still, just a day and a half at work now and four whole days off! Woo hoo!